Screen Printing Specifications Art Specifications

* The best way to prepare your artwork is at the exact size you want it printed. This is easy but if you can’t edit your piece tell us the size you want it.

Read the 3 hints below to help you through this process.

3 cool hints

1. Nipple to nipple on a guy is 30cm (length of a school ruler) wide and is a good size / girls about 28cm. A chest / breast logo is usually about 12cm wide (and high if you like) 15cm is getting very big for the breast area so never go above that. A full on skater style massive print would be 30cm wide x 50cm high.

2. You need your design to fit well on all your sizes so we make it so it doesn’t look silly on your smallest shirts or biggest shirts (generally even the biggest brands find one size print to fit all size shirts).

3. The best way to judge size is print it out on any printer (don’t shrink to page) and hold it (or a ruler) up in front of you in a mirror (this is how we do it!).

* Please change fonts/text to outlines or rasterise if you know how — this way we know we’re seeing what you’re seeing.

Fonts / Typefaces can change when opened in a different computer as my computer will use my version of the font you nominated. If that sort of detail matters to you — outline or rasterise the type.

* When emailing artwork, your file should be no larger than 12mb.

The human eye can’t see more than 150 – 180 dpi – so… if your artwork doesn’t need to cover a bus side or be 600dpi we should be able to handle it. If it’s still too big use a file transfer service like RapidShare / Sharefile/ DropBox / YouSendIt. You can easily get a free trial.

The more in-depth version

All of the above, plus:

* For multi-colour artwork, we would prefer different colours on different layers where possible.

* Please complete an artwork mock up for placement, so we know how you want the finished print to look.

The below template is a great place to work. It’s an Adobe illustrator pdf which will open in either Illustrator or Photoshop at actual size. So any artwork you drag in will be at the actual size.Download Our Mockup Document

Mockup Document

One solid colour art by Blair Sayer & Ben Brown, printed as one colour black, and printed as one colour blue.

“PHOTOGRAPHIC & HALFTONE” ARTWORK

Photographic work can be tricky. The most important thing to know is that the t-shirt fabric is not complex enough for a 300dpi photo–quality like you see in a magazine. Therefore most screen printers work on approx 45dpi — this in turn will tell you that it won’t be a perfect photo. If you can accept that, then keep reading.

All photographic work created in Photoshop should be created at 300dpi — we will translate it as 45dpi through our software when making your films. We ask you to create at this resolution (300dpi) so we are starting with the best image available.

A colour photograph is created as a CMYK file and printed as a 4–colour print. This can be expensive so you should look at that as it is four films and four screens to set-up.

If you want to create a photo as a 1–colour, convert to grayscale and flatten.

The biggest key to the effective printing of photographic work is contrast.

The complete 3 colour piece and close up section

ONE COLOUR” ARTWORK

The one colour print is the easiest print. You can go very fine with detail or very straight forward with words on the front (and possibly back or sleeves) of a t-shirt.

Simple text gets your message across.

You can use really complex shapes and combinations and still do a one colour solid print. It’s cheaper to a one colour print and many brands use it as a design rule. What we are after is solid lines to make a film from.

If you are working in Photoshop, work at 200 – 300 dpi in your correct size. My best hint for creating artwork is to work on the piece in the colour of ink you are thinking, on the background colour of the t-shirt you are thinking of printing on.

The same rules apply: * We need to see your artwork at the exact size you want it printed. If your logo is 20cm x 20cm, send it to us at that size.* Please supply your artwork as a PDF file.* Please change fonts/text to outlines or rasterise if you know how — this way we know we’re seeing what you’re seeing.* When emailing artwork, your file should be no larger than 12mb.* PLUS — Use our Template download to drop your art into or use as a guide.

The print on the left will print better, it has more contrast and will convert to halftone better than the one on the right.

What are you trying to show? At full size the portrait will appear to show more detail as it’s larger in comparison to the same canvas size.

An image changed to 1-colour can then be printed in any colour…. think sepia or grey.

Vector Halftone Work

Sometimes a multi-colour vector needs to be converted to halftone for either speed or cost, so a 3-colour might be done as a 2-colour or 1-colour, whilst achieving a lot of what was intended with the 3-colour.

The way to do this is with transparent values of black.

The first is 100% black.

The second is 30% black.

The third is 60% black.

The forth is 45% or 80% black.

If you look back in the multi-colour section of this page, the vector there is 100% black – 30% and 60% …. The idea here is again contrast — we are always looking for the most contrast between shades.